christopher cocca

6s Vol 2 will not be available for purchase today.  You can check out Rob McEvily’s post here.  I’m all for anything that builds up more anticpation.  As soon as the volume is ready, I’ll link to it.  Sounds like sometime next week, perhaps.

Six Sentences Vol. 2 hits the streets in 6 days.   There’s an intro by Neil LaBute and a special appearence by Rick Moody.  And then there are the fabulous six-sentence stories by authors from around the world.  I’m excited to be included.

Our friend Rob, 6s founder and editior, has a new promotional video below:

Remember “Privy”, a piece a workshopped here a few weeks ago during one of our discussions on the fine lines between fact and fiction?

I turned it into a 6s (the streamlining works in its favor) and it’s up today at Six Sentences.

Rob McEvily might be the hardest working man in micro lit.  His Six Sentences project has taken off to some very cool levels, including a print anthology, art work based on various sixes and now a social network for 6s writers and their fans.  Check it out.

It’s perhaps a little known fact that Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, has been home to at least two literary notables. Stephen Vincent Benét was a poet and writer and the author of what some consider the quintessential American short story, “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” Hilda Doolittle, otherwise known as HD, is another important figure in American letters. Both were born in Bethlehem, PA, and while Bethlehem is noted for its strong musical, spiritual, and academic heritage, there’s not the same kind of literary scene as such.

That said, I’ve always thought that the myth of a place is central to the stories its people produce. The narrative here is urban decline and renewal, suburban sprawl and now, maybe, contraction, old and new populations, disappearing green space and agrarian cultures and the general homogenization of the mid-Atlantic and resistance to it. The same could be said of hundreds of other places but each one has its touchstones. Billy Joel made the Lehigh Valley’s into a prescient song called “Allentown.” I’m sure local writers could do just as well artistically, and because realism requires reality, it doesn’t matter much that nothing ever happens here; the context is what’s exceptional, the local lens through which you grope at larger forces.

All literature is local, and all literature starts with the writer’s internal narrative, the stimulus-response she’s been hearing since words started making sense. What’s your local legend? What’s your tension? Where do you see something universal in something so no-one-cares specific? Do you have six words on Lodi, Ohio or Elizabeth, New Jersey or Wheeling, West Virginia? Six sentences on East LA or Tallahassee or Nowhere, Pennsylvania? I think you need to share them.

Up yesterday at 6S.  Here.

A new piece of mine (“Progress“) is up at Six Sentences. It’s excerpted from something larger and more unruly. It’s also another 100 word story. Come pick me up.

Today’s challenge at 100 Word Stories was “I spy with my little eye something red.” I’m really proud of what I came up with. Please check it out and vote/comment here.

My short piece is here.

Six Sentences editor Robert McEvily wrote a great six sentence description of his project for me to share on the microfiction lens at Squidoo.  Did you know that 6S has featured the work of such talents as Neil LaBute, Eric Spitznagel  and Shonali Bhowmik?  I’m looking forward to my upcoming 6S debut later this month and two pieces to follow early next month.